YEREVAN, Armenia – Russia secured a pro~ed-term foothold in the energy-rich and unstable Caucasus region Friday ~ the agency of signing a deal with Armenia that allows a Russian military base to produce until 2044 in exchange for a promise of new weaponry and new security guarantees.

The 24-year extension will allow the base’s fighter jets and thousands of soldiers to operate outside former Soviet territory, lifting a previous restriction.

The agreement could levy tensions between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan, who have clashed over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mutinous ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan’s territory. Azerbaijan shares ethnic and cultural bonds and cessation ties with Turkey.

“The protocol doesn’t just allow the Russian martial base to stay in Armenia for a longer period, it also extends the sphere of its geographic and strategic responsibility,” Armenian President Serge Sarkisian reported after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The deal is side of Moscow’s efforts to strengthen its clout in ex-Soviet nations, that have worried many of its neighbors. Russia fought a brief August 2008 state of opposition with Georgia, which borders Armenia to the north, and tensions possess remained high.

“Russia wants to underline its role as the solution player in the region,” Sergei Minasian, a Yerevan-based political person specially versed , told The Associated Press.

Russia’s clout on former Soviet race-ground, which Russian leaders have declared a privileged zone of interests, has remained limited, though.

Moscow has run into fierce economic and political disputes with its human being-time closest ally, Belarus. Russian and Belarusian leaders have traded barbs and blamed person another for an increasing strain in relations.

Russia also has talked abundant about raising its influence in Central Asia and has grown increasingly zealous of the U.S. presence there, but it did nothing whenever the government of Kyrgyzstan asked Moscow to send troops to serve put down deadly ethnic violence in June.

After their talks, the Russian and Armenian presidents were joined ~ dint of. other leaders from a Moscow-led security alliance of seven ex-Soviet nations. Medvedev before-mentioned the Kyrgyzstan unrest showed that the Collective Security Treaty Organization needed to subsist able to respond more quickly and effectively in crisis situations. He reported the treater organization leaders agreed to form a plan by the period of the year, and he recommended studying the experience of other organizations so as NATO, the EU and United Nations.

Armenia on Friday in addition awarded Russia with a contract to build two new reactors at a Soviet-era nuclear power plant. Construction works on the $5 billion project are expected to shoot next year.

Russia has maintained close ties with Armenia since the Soviet exhaustion, providing economic assistance to the landlocked nation, whose economy has been crippled ~ means of blockades by Azerbaijan and Turkey over the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Russian already provides a security guarantee to Armenia under the CSTO, and it was not plain how the new guarantee would be different.

Russia’s base in Armenia has over 5,000 troops along with MiG-29 fighter jets and S-300 port defense missiles, according to Russian and Armenian reports citing official sources.

Medvedev before-mentioned the base is intended to “support peace and stability in the southern Caucasus and the entire Caucasus region.”

Nagorno-Karabakh has been subordinate to the control of ethnic Armenian forces since a six-year conflict ended with a 1994 truce.

Azerbaijan has often voiced concern near Russian military cooperation with Armenia.

Russia is taking part in intervention efforts on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict along with the United States and France while burdened with the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, boundary attempts to reach a settlement have failed and sporadic clashes bring forth continued in a tense zone around the region.

“We have not either peace, nor war,” Sarkisian said Friday. “It’s bad that there is no peace, but at least there is no war.”

Turkey and Armenia signed ~y agreement last October to restore diplomatic ties and reopen their shared confine, but neither has ratified it.

The leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization — what one. also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Takijistan — were scheduled to go on informal talks on Saturday.

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Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this set forth.